Abominable acts of incest and child defilement are assuming an epidemic proportion in Edo State with 72 cases recorded between January and July 2026, even as a 14-year-old is almost due to put to bed for her biological father who has allegedly gone into hiding.
This startling revelation was made on Thursday by the state commissioner for Women Affairs and Social Development, Eugenia Abdallah, at a bi-monthly press conference organised by the state Ministry of Information and Strategy.
Abdallah disclosed that over 50 per cent of these cases were perpetrated by the biological fathers of the minors.
The commissioner, flanked by Prince Kassim Afegbua, Commissioner, Ministry of Information and Strategy, and the Managing Director, Edo State Geographic Information Service (EdoGIS), Dr Innocent Bello, disclosed that the minors defiled by their fathers were between ages 2 and 10.
According to the commissioner, “Mostly, 50 per cent are abused by their own fathers, with the victims’ ages ranging 2 to 10 years. For instance, there is a little girl currently in our custody who was impregnated by her father. She is just 14 years old and is eight months pregnant as we speak. The case was reported to us by a neighbour.
“When we asked her about her father, she told us that she had lost her father and pleaded with us not to have him arrested. Meanwhile, she is the only person who can tell us where her father is.”
The Commissioner, however, expressed the state government’s commitment to ensuring that vulnerable citizens were not merely identified but protected, adding that “survivors are not merely heard but supported; that women are not merely trained but provided opportunities for economic advancement, and that social-protection programmes increasingly produce measurable outcomes.”
Speaking on security and steps taken by the state government to protect residents of the state, the Commissioner for Information reiterated the government’s ban on movement of motorcycles in the Benin metropolis, adding that it’s for security reason.
Afegbua further stated that “We are not pretending about it. The reason why this was done was purely for security reasons. And the kind of reports we get daily has become a security concern to us. People use Okada (motorcycle) to kidnap people, to do robbery. They carry passengers, they take them to a lonely place and dispossess them of their belongings.”
On his part, Bello, the Managing Director, EdoGIS, explained that the reason for the delay in the release of land documents submitted for processing by applicants, was because of “detection of fake application documents in many cases, and that includes survey plans, task clearance, fake ID, etc.”
